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Monday, November 25, 2013

Once we recover from the second major renovation (adding a second bathroom & a master suite), I want to tackle getting the house back up to three bedrooms. At first I thought of using the attic space since it is pretty tall already and takes up the same floor space of the entire first floor, but it would involve putting in big shed dormers (pictured here) on the east & west sides of the house and therefore pretty much need us to restructure the entire roof. That sounded veeeeery expensive and would involve us waiting a long time while we saved up the money for that kind of renovation. Plus the spiral staircase that I envisioned took up the only space where a fireplace could go.So the night that I spent alone in the house taking down all of the HVAC ducts in the basement I started thinking about the basement more and more. After all it is also very tall (8 feet for a basement isn't too shabby), and now that we moved the furnace to the other room and all the vents came down it is getting easier to picture us using that space.I had already asked my Dad if it was possible for us to finish the basement (add drywall, flooring & all that jazz) at some point and he said yes. And so suddenly the idea of finishing a basement seemed much more appealing than redoing our entire roof. So now the plan is to make the storage room (with the attic & garage I don't think storage space will be an issue) into a bedroom and my Dad even had the brilliant idea to make the old coal chute into a second window for the room! Plus it's on the west side of the house so it'll get that beautiful light in there. We plan on redoing all the basement windows in the Spring so that's when we'll turn the chute into a window.

We will also finish the giant room in the basement that is under the dining and living rooms while we're at it (the utility room will stay unfinished). I imagine it'll be some combination of family room/play room/pottery studio. We will also have to redo the stairs and somehow close up the creepy crawlspaces next to them (but have access hatches??), because I want people feeling comfortable down there, not creeped out. I love my parents' basement guest room because it is totally refinished and feels like a normal room, plus it's always cold! (I can't sleep when it's hot, I like it cold.cold.cold while I sleep).

And at this point those are the only (only!) major renovations we have planned! In between those big projects we'll work on smaller things like living room & dining room built-in bookcases and the built-in desks & storage for the Craft Room, plus random outdoor projects (chicken coop!). Stay tuned!

Sunday, November 10, 2013

It was somebody's birthday celebration this weekend so we took the weekend off from working on the house and had a birthday dinner each night instead. So here's a post for you of the non-Weekend Update variety: Now that a lot of the have-to-do-right-away-things like get the house heated, change the locks, take down all the weeds, trim trees that are rubbing against the house, plant bulbs, etc, I have time to think about some of the fun parts of owning a house. For example, painting the walls!Since the floor plan is so open the colors need to "go" with each other. I don't want the whole house the same color, but I don't want jarring differences between rooms when you can stand in one room and see the 3 main living areas all at once.After you read this post you may not be surprised to find out that my favorite color is blue. Ahem.So for the dining room (and once the kitchen is done it will be the same color) I am thinking Ocean Breeze from Benjamin Moore:

It's a light blue because I'm working with the dark wood trim for now and I don't want things to feel too heavy. Tangent: I do have dreams of painting the floor trim & door trim white but leaving the doors and windows dark wood. Here's an idea (from Pinterest of course) of what that looks like:

I love how the door pops, because I love the doors in this house and I want them to stand out. We'll see what happens...And I want the back of the dining room built-ins (referenced in the Dreaming & Scheming: The Kitchen post) to have a bold color. I'm thinking Deep Ocean from Benjamin Moore: It's from the same color sheet as Ocean Breeze, I picked the lightest & darkest colors from the same color range sheet. Here's an inspiration picture from my favorite blog Young House Love:It's a bold pop of color, but it's not overwhelming because it's just the back of the built-ins.And for the living room I am less decided. I'm definitely buying test pots of these and painting on the walls to compare:First up is Benjamin Moore Copper Patina:Or Benjamin Moore Surf 'n Turf which is very, very, almost comically, similar to Copper Patina:Or Benjamin Moore Nimbus Gray:The more I think about it the more I think I'll do Copper Patina for the Living Room and Nimbus Gray for the Craft Room, but I really have to see the test patches on the wall to know for sure.To compare let's bring the Ocean Breeze back down here so you don't have to scroll up:

For the master bedroom I'm pretty committed. For now we are using Bedroom #1 as our bedroom and I plan on painting the final Master Suite the same color when we move bedrooms. My inspiration was a tissue box. I'm serious. Look:

When the living room color is finalized I think I'll pick a deep color for the back of those built-ins that is the darkest version of whichever color I go with.In case you're wondering where these built-ins are going, they will be on either side of the big opening between the Living & Dining rooms. The Dining Room ones will hold serving dishes and such, and the Living Room ones will have books, DVDs, picture frames, and decorate-y stuff.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

The second big project that we'll tackle (once the kitchen is done and we have a bit of a break), will be adding a second bathroom to the house as part of a Master Suite. This will take some visualiation and I've used Paint again to help. But first, some words:Currently there are 3 bedrooms. We plan to combine two of them (called #2 & #3 in the House Tour) into a Master Suite. The bathroom will go on the the north wall of bedroom #3 because then it will share a wall with the current bathroom which will make the plumbing aspect of it much easier.

So the door to the current Bedroom #3 will be drywalled up and the access to the Master Suite will be through the door the current Bedroom #2. So the wall of closets separating the two bedrooms will be knocked down to create a giant bedroom. I will finally have my Dream Closet somewhere in there, but probably will be close to the bathroom.

Since I don't think we need the full two bedrooms I think we will work on some sort of closet expansion for Bedroom #1 with some of the space from Bedroom #2. I also hope to put in a fireplace in the living room (which will butt out into the expanded closet of Bedroom #1). I can't live in a house that doesn't have Santa access :)

If you're having trouble picturing what a wood cookstove would look like in a normal fireplace, click here.Eventually we want the house to get back up to three bedrooms which will be the topic of the next Dreaming and Scheming post!Also now that the house is heated and I can think about painting you can look forward to a post on my paint color ideas for the house!

brought up another metal shelf from the basement (left by previous owners) to help organize

put gardening supplies, extra tiles from the bathroom (left by previous owners), scrap wood, and grill stuff up on shelves

put long scrap wood, plywood, and foam board up in the rafters

put the extra door and old screens up on a pallet

got the snow thrower attachment for the tractor into it's permanent home (my god that things weighs one million pounds)

moved the tractor into its parking space (who knows how to get their hands on a parking space concrete bumper thing?)

cleaned the garage window (oh god the bugs)

swept & Shop Vacked (that's a verb now) forever and ever

We forgot to take a picture before the scrapper guys started taking the metal, so here's a Before that isn't a true Before (the pile got much, much bigger than this, probably double):

And AFTER:

And next time we're in the house there will be a new furnace with all new ducts, new water heater, new PEX tubing replacing all our old iron pipes, a new drain for our sump pump (that doesn't drain into our septic system) and hopefully a new AC unit unless they run out of time in the allotted two days. We'll also get estimates for redoing the two sink drains since they aren't pitched right. Hopefully once that's fixed the bathroom sink will drain again...Also in the next week or so we'll get normal house insurance instead of the expensive catastrophe plan that we have now.

About Me

I love cooking, baking, quilting, sewing, and all things DIY. Every time I do something crafty I'll show you some pictures on this here blog.
And the "we" around here refers to my husband and myself :)